A known driving support device for setting off an alarm to a driver of a vehicle disclosed in JP2822508B2 proposes a driving condition detecting device. Specifically, the driving condition detecting device sets a standard direction at which the driver's face is supposed to be, and detects an actual direction of the driver's face. Further, the driving condition detecting device detects an angle between the standard direction and the actual direction and determines whether or not the detected angle is acceptable.
Further, a device for detecting a location of eyes and a location of the face is disclosed in JP2000-339476A, and such device detects an edge image from an image in which a user is captured by a TV camera and obtains a central line of the face from the image of the face and the edge image. On the basis of the detected centerline, areas of face parts are determined, and further, the face image is divided into a left-eye area, a right-eye area and a nose area. The device further detects locations of the eyes in the face image and the edge image within each of the areas.
Further, an inter vehicle communicating system disclosed in JP2001-283381A exchange information among plural vehicles. Specifically, the system includes a driving supporting camera mounted to a user's vehicle in order to capture an image around the user's vehicle, and on the basis of the captured image, driving related information such as a traffic situation around the user's vehicle are detected, and such information is transmitted to another vehicle by a wireless method.
As described above, the driving support device disclosed in JP2822508B2 detects a direction of the driver's face, detects a face angle and determines whether or not the face angle is in a tolerance level. The device sets off an alarm to a driver of a vehicle on the basis of the angle, however, not on the basis of a relationship between the user's vehicle and the vehicle coming from the opposite direction. Further, the device sets off an alarm at frequent intervals, and this may annoy the driver.
In the same manner, the central line of the face obtained by the device disclosed in JP2000-339476A is not related to the vehicle coming from the opposite direction.
On the other hand, when the user's vehicle faces the vehicle coming from the opposite direction and the user's vehicle, which is temporally in a stopped state, starts traveling, a collision can be avoided if each of the drivers positioned in a face-to-face state so as to be able to communicate each other, however there is no means to confirm such condition so far, and the drivers cannot communicate each other with an eye contact and that may result in a collision. A method disclosed in JP2001-283381A transmits information such as traffic situation around the user's vehicle, which is captured by such as a driving support camera, by means of a wireless method. However, because such driving support camera is provided in order to capture the image of surroundings of the user's vehicle, not the face image of the driver, such means works without regard to any reference in behaviors of the drivers of each vehicle.
A need thus exists to provide a vehicle driving support device that sets off an alarm on the basis of an information exchanged between one vehicle and the other vehicle so that each of the drivers confirms that they are in a face-to-face situation.